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Thailand and Asia NewsThe News Forum. Thai News, world News and current affairs. Find out what's happening in the world today. For local Thai News check out Bangkok News, Chiang Rai News, Pattaya News and Phuket News.Robust discussion is allowed, but posters should stay on topic and refrain from personal attacks.

Deet can be used on kratom plants as an insecticide. When you ingest kratom, you ingest the leaves and stem. So I don't think they are saying that Deet was put in the drinks. They are saying that Deet contaminated kratom was ingested.

Maybe some kratom plants accidentally got harvested that had been sprayed with Deet recently. I that is a good possibility.

the only problem with that is the acute oral toxicity is about 2000mg/kg (or 2grams/kg), so a 60kg woman would need 120 grams to become really sick (acutely ill) and probably a good bit more than that to reliably kill. This is why there are few--or zero--reported deaths by DEET.

so some DEET on some leaves wouldn't be enough to make them really ill, much less kill them.

LatinDancer, maybe you missed my post above where I showed it probably does not cause diarrhea. The link the poster gave wherein it said 'diarrhea' is old info that contained other inaccuracies as well. On many links I checked on the net and in a toxicology book, they didn't say diarrhea, only vomiting. I called the U.S. Poison Control center and she said: "no diarrhea" and she said she had never heard of a death from DEET ingestion.

But even if it does cause diarrhea, the idea that someone 'accidentally' put 6 ounces of DEET in their drinks is ridiculous.

I just found some info where people did die from DEET ingestion and the amount ingested was less than 6 ounces. Keep in mind 30mls is about 1 ounce.

But notice that all three ingestion deaths involved ingesting alcohol or pills along with the DEET.
***********

Rarely, people have ingested DEET intentionally to commit suicide, or because of psychological problems (Tenenbein 1987; Fraser et al. 1995). The effects resulting from intentional ingestion are variable, due to the different scenarios in which they occurred. Of the six reported cases of deliberate DEET ingestion, three led to death. In these cases, the amount ingested was 15-50 mL of 47.5% to 95% DEET in bottles. In two cases, bottles of DEET were drunk along with unspecified amounts of alcohol. Health effects included coma, unresponsiveness to pain and other stimuli, and death (Tenenbein 1987). In another case, a woman with a history of unipolar-depressive illness ingested a number of pills along with 50 mL of 95% DEET. She arrived at the hospital comatose and pulseless. She had a generalized seizure and died from a generalized bowel infarction (Tenenbein 1987). In another case, a woman with a history of psychological disorders ingested 15-25 mL of 95% DEET. She had a right and left atrial enlargement and diffuse ST-T abnormalities, but returned to normal within 24 hours with no further cardiac abnormalities (Fraser et al. 1995).

From 1961 to 2002, eight deaths were reported related to DEET exposure. Three of these deaths resulted from deliberate ingestion of DEET (Tenenbein 1987) (see above). Two deaths were reported in adults following dermal exposure to DEET (Bell et al. 2002). The remaining three cases were all female children, with ages of 17 months, 5 years, and 6 years (Zadikoff 1979; Osimitz and Murphy 1997). All three children had been described as having "heavy, "frequent" or "nightly" applications of DEET.

Ok. And yes...I agree that it looks like it was done on purpose. But the motive remains unknown. It could have been a psychopath wanting to kill cute girls or it could just have been a "mickey" so that they could be robbed.....but by whom ? They were with a couple of guys.
As for the mystery ingredient which their bodies tried to reject so violently that it was expelled from both ends and caused hemorrhaging.....it may well come to light eventually. Mind you, a combination of drugs/substances can do weird things.

The Phi Phi Islands sit off the western coast of Thailand, floating like jewels in a turquoise sea, a picture-perfect image of a tropical getaway. Director Danny Boyle filmed his 2000 psychothriller, The Beach, on the largest of those islands and if you know the movie, you know, despite the gem-like setting the story ends badly.

They say, though, that the movie put the largest of the islands, Ko Phi Phi Don, on the map as a tourist getaway, a reasonably priced home to glittering beaches and unlimited partying. And that’s undoubtedly what drew two young sisters from a small Canadian village, just north of the Maine border, to travel there for a summer break from their university studies.

Noemi Belanger was 26 and her sister, Audrey, 20, when they planned the June vacation. Both sisters lived in their hometown of Pohenegamook, Quebec. Did I mention that it was small, the kind of place where people know each other, stay close? The population is about 3,000 and both girls worked for their father, Carl, in his grocery store before starting university classes. They were happy girls, friendly, residents say, involved in their community, helping out at the local library, at public beaches.

This summer, they were ready to fly a little, indulge in a splashy vacation. So they saved their money and flew to Thailand in June, went to visit the Phi Phi Islands. And there, as a flood of mid-June news stories made obvious, things went very wrong. Very, very wrong.

Audrey and Noemi Belanger

The stories were puzzled, horrified. A story in Canada’s National Post described a hotel maid finding the sisters dead in their room, with lesions tracked across their bodies, their fingernails and toenails turned an odd grayish blue. They were huddled in their beds, relayed the Global Post, smeared with vomit and blood.

Rumors flew of an exotic poison, of a lurking killer. Dismissive statements from the police added to the sense of mystery. “We found many kinds of over-the-counter-drugs, including ibuprofen, which can cause serious effects on the stomach,” one investigator said, sounding as if packing painkillers was the real problem. Mysterious poison deaths of tourists visiting the Phi Phi Islands were recalled: the 2009 death of a Seattle woman, still unsolved today. The similar and also unexplained death of a 22-year-old woman from Norway the same year. An odd cluster of deaths in another Thai city during winter of last year, including a 23-year-old woman from New Zealand. The conspiracy theories expanded to include the unexplained deaths of two young women in Vietnam this summer. “Is this a cover-up?” asked a letter writer in the Bangkok Post after the police went on from the ibuprofen theory to one that involved food poisoning.

And not just any food poisoning. A leak from the investigation suggested that detectives were considering the possibility that the sisters had dined – somewhere – on either poisonous mushrooms or blowfish, sometimes called pufferfish or fugu. The fishes are considered a delicacy but they must be carefully prepared to exclude any contact with the liver or other internal organs, which contain an exceptionally potent neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin.

Neither of these suggestions, though, were an ideal match for the described symptoms. Tetrodotoxin is most famous for its ability to induce a corpse-like paralysis in victims; they may remain alert but unable to move or communicate, gradually suffocating as the lungs fail. Poisonous mushrooms tend to kill by gradually destroying the liver. As quickly as the suggestion was floated it seemed to disappear, leaving the questions to further simmer over the summer.

Until last week, when a preliminary autopsy report was announced, which apparently indicated a toxic level of exposure. According to news reports, toxicologists in Thailand now believed that the two sisters had been drinking a popular local cocktail that contains Coca-Cola, cough syrup, ground up leaves from the kratom tree, and the well-known mosquito repellent DEET and is admired for its hallucinogenic qualities. In their case, apparently, too much DEET had ended up in the drink.

Phi Phi is renowed as a rites-of-passage destination for 20-somethings and it transforms from a haven for day-trippers in the sunshine to a less beguiling island party after dark.

Alcohol is just one of the many ingredients that Phi Phi’s party people mix in their buckets.

Each bucket is a concoction of all kinds of juices and substances that are mixed into containers of various sizes and usually sucked through straws all night long.

It’s a nicely sinister portrait of cocktails in the Phi Phi islands. Still my first reaction was a kind of “DEET, really?” skepticism. We’re not talking about anything like tetrodotoxin here; this is a compound we routinely spray all over ourselves on camping trips and summer hikes. Our Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 30 percent of the U.S. population uses a DEET-infused product every year. Plenty of us have accidentally swallowed a little during an over-enthusiastic assault on mosquitoes without getting sick (including myself). Not that you’d want to take it by the tumbler, of course. But it’s reasonable to ask whether it would take a tumbler to kill you

The short answer, yes, pretty close to that. DEET, by the way, stands for N.N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide, which is basically chemist-code for a formula that includes the familiar elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. It apparently works as a repellent by disrupting insect olfaction-detection systems. And an EPA analysis found that it is slightly toxic to birds, fish, and aquatic invertebrates and has”very low toxicity potential” in mammals, such as ourselves.

So it’s not surprising that the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reports that people have committed suicide with the repellent but only by drinking full “bottles of DEET” along with quantities of alcohol. In other words, evidence is that it would take that tumbler full to kill you. I also looked at the other ingredients in the suspect cocktail, except for the Coca-Cola (which hasn’t contained cocaine for more than a century). The codeine in cough syrup could, in a high enough amount, add to a sleepy buzz. And kratom – while known to be hallucinogenic – can also bring on a numbing lethargy in too high a dose. It is generally, though, considered to be most risky for its additive qualities than for its acute toxicity issues.

Which brings us back to the DEET theory of death. And that requires someone to pour a ridiculously large quantity of this pale yellowish liquid into a drink served to two sisters from Canada. Could someone be that careless? Sure, especially if they were enjoying the island brew themselves. Still, only the Belanger sisters died after that night on the beach; under this theory only one overtoxic cocktail was served. And that does raise a few other questions. For instance, why – as you may have noticed from my fatality list – is it mostly young women who are dying of mysterious chemical poisonings in a tropical paradise?

Even Phuket Wan (which seems remarkably tough-minded for a publication focused on tourism) seems unconvinced by the mosquito repellent hypothesis, noting that it would be unusual for only two people to be poisoned by a shared bucket drink.

Could it be a cover up, the paper asked, for a heavy-handed use of insecticide in the sisters’ room? Insecticides have been suspected in some of the other deaths. Could it be that island authorities were trying to hide the existence of a killer who was deliberately spiking drinks? Or, slightly less creepily, that the women had been killed by excessive use of insecticides by hotel management and that authorities were moving to protect reputations? “All options remain open,” the paper warned, until the authorities produce evidence of a much more meticulous investigation.

And, yes, you’ll find me in the “options remain open” camp as well. It may well be that this is as simple as it sounds, two trusting travelers from rural Canada drinking an untrustworthy bar drink. Still, at the moment, if I felt a sudden urge to go party in the Phi Phi islands, you would find me insisting on a nicely capped container – and, I think, opening that bottle myself.

__________________
"Slavery is the daughter of darkness; an ignorant people is the blind instrument of its own destruction; ambition and intrigue take advantage of the credulity and inexperience of men who have no political, economic or civil knowledge. They mistake pure illusion for reality, license for freedom, treason for patriotism, vengeance for justice."-Simón Bolívar

PHUKET: Police investigating the mysterious deaths of two Canadian sisters on the Thai holiday island of Phi Phi have been ordered not to comment further because the issue is ''very sensitive.''

The suppression of vital information about the deaths of Noemi and Audrey Belanger comes despite a call by the sisters' father for details of the deaths to be made public.

Today Ryan Kells, the fiance of American Jill St Onge who died in equally mysterious circumstances with Norwegian Julie Bergheim on Phi Phi in 2009, echoed the call for information to be made public.

''I would love to have a more detailed investigation,'' he told Phuketwan. Three years ago, Mr Kells was quickly bundled off Phi Phi with the body of Ms St Onge in the bottom of a speedboat after the first pair of mysterious deaths.

Now the toll of young women killed without cause on Phi Phi has risen to four and information remains scarce.

An article posted on Phuketwan on Friday revealed for the first time that an autopsy on the Belanger sisters showed the presence of insecticide, according to local police.

Canadian news reports established the chemical as DEET, according to a journalist who has viewed the results of an autopsy. Other reports have since suggested the poison may have been drunk by the sisters in a euphoria-inducing cocktail known locally as 4x100.

The concoction, usually drunk by young partiers on Phi Phi from plastic buckets of varying sizes, contains cough syrup, cola, ground-up leaves of kratom - a natural drug - and ice.

Today police were quoted in the Thai media as saying results from the autopsy in Thailand have been sent to Canadian embassy officials.

Despite the call by Carl Belanger for more information, Canadian government officials are, like the Thai authorities, reluctant to reveal more about the deaths of Audrey, 20, and Noemi, 26, almost three month ago.

The lack of information plays into the hands of tourism-related businesses in Thailand that are not entirely legal and prefer to cover up mysterious deaths rather than have the spotlight shone on their practices.

Law enforcement officers are seldom evident after legal drinking hours on holiday islands in Krabi, the province where Phi Phi retains a strong attraction for 20-somethings who want to take in the sights by day and alcohol with additives in ''buckets'' by night.

Although there is no direct evidence that the Belanger sisters died from a drink laced with deadly DEET, there are few other ways that the chemical could have entered their bodies in a quantity potent enough to kill.

In contrast to the police, Edthirit Kingleg, President of the Tourist Association of Krabi, called for greater disclosure of the details of the autopsy and the investigation.

''Everywhere young tourists go there are drugs,'' he said. ''I don't want to have the image of Krabi damaged.''

He said the local tourist industry often went on ''road shows'' to overseas markets to sell the natural beauty of Krabi to tourists.

''When they come and they have an issue like this, it's very bad for Krabi tourism.''

He said the it was well-known that businesses operated beyond the law in catering to the young tourists who came to Phi Phi and Krabi to enjoy the nightlife as well as the snorkelling and diving.

''The Krabi provincial authorities should do their job and control the entertainment areas on Phi Phi, Koh Lanta and Ao Nang,'' he said.

''All businesses catering to young travellers must be checked. If the authorities do not act, in the long term it will damage the good image of Krabi.''

Mr Edthirit said he was shocked because this was the second time that two young women had died on Phi Phi and the authorities had yet to determine a cause.

''We hear about this issue in Thailand from the international media, not from the people who should be telling us, the local authorities,'' he said.

After the mysterious deaths of several tourists in the northern Thai city of Chinag Mai last year, Thai authorities undertook to fully investigate tourist deaths in future and provide speedy updates on the causes.

That promise appears to have been quickly forgotten.

Local businesses are still scrambling to prevent the deaths of the Belangers damaging their visitor numbers, just as they did when pushing Ryan Kells off Phi Phi with the body of Jill St Onge, 27, in the bottom of the boat in 2009.

Results of a second autopsy on the sisters, undertaken in Canada, have also yet to be revealed.

With Mr Belanger calling for more information to be made public, the Canadian authorities' commitment to ''privacy'' and their reluctance to make any details public is likely to be questioned.

In 2009, Mr Kells and Ms St Onge's family were highly critical of the sketchy and inconclusive nature of the autopsy conducted on her in Thailand.

The body of Ms Bergheim, 22, was returned to Norway where a second autopsy also failed to determine a cause for her death.

Mr Kells and Ms St Onge were staying in a room at Laleena Guesthouse on Phi Phi, with Ms Bergheim and another Norwegian in a next-door room.

All four tourists fell sick within hours of each other at Laleena. Mr Kells and Ms Berheim's friend, Karina Refseth, 21, narrowly escaped the same fate as their companions.

When Phi Phi Turned to a Holiday Hell: Why Four Mysterious Deaths Will Not be Forgotten

By Alan Morison
Sunday, September 9, 2012

PHUKET: Three years on, American Ryan Kells still feels the pain of the unsolved death of his wife-to-be, Jill St Onge, on the holiday island of Phi Phi.

He cannot grasp what it must be like to lose two daughters, as Canada's Belanger family has now done, without knowing what killed Audrey, 20, and Noemi, 26.

''Hearing about these sisters . . . no family needs to go through this,'' he said this week. ''I could not imagine, having lost Jill, what it would be like to lose two daughters.

''Two young women. They would be the light of your life as a parent . . . I mean, it's the hardest thing.''

Jill St Onge, 27, and Norwegian Julie Bergheim, 22, died within hours of each other on the Thai holiday island in 2009. No cause for the deaths has been determined.

The women did not know each other. Their lives intersected on Phi Phi just before their deaths.

Jill St Onge and Julie Bergheim fell ill in a guesthouse just a few hundred metres from the resort where Audrey and Noemi Belanger were found dead in June.

Almost three months on, Ryan Kells' biggest fear is that there will be more deaths.

''Something has to be done this time,'' he told Phuketwan from his home in Seattle. ''If not, we are going to read about it happening again and again.''

He believes a coverup is taking place and that an independent team of police from another part of Thailand should be investigating all four deaths.

''Two people - the Belangers - don't just die from a food incident so quickly. Heart and lung failure don't usually come so fast.

''The government is trying to blame their deaths on something else because they don't want tourism on Phi Phi to be ruined.''

Phi Phi is a beautiful place. But the island's scenery is matched by an inability to dispose of the garbage that accumulates because of its popularity, and an on-the-nose sewage system.

Heavy rains during the monsoon season intensify the stench and pools of polluted water pockmark the paths. Drinking water has to be brought onto the island at great expense.

After dark, Phi Phi parties all night, every night. Young people, mostly in their 20s, enjoy the fun, basically unrestrained by laws or convention.

On a tour of Asia together, Ryan proposed to Jill three weeks before they reached Phi Phi.

But he said this week that they were cultural tourists, more interested in the history and tradition of places, and simply persuaded by people they had encountered on their trip that Phi Phi was a ''must see.''

''Jill and I loved Thailand so much. We had been making plans to live there,'' he said.

''But Phi Phi? The island was gorgeous but we found it was just like a big drunken fraternity party. We could see one of those in any college town in the US.''

After a couple of days on the island, Ryan said, they decided to move into an air-conditioned room at Laleena Guesthouse simply because the heat was becoming unbearable. Another 24 hours and they would be heading on, to Phuket.

''I remember the chemical smell when we walked in to the room,'' Ryan said. ''One of us said 'It's kind of funky in here.' It was as if someone had spilled something the night before and they had used a strong cleaning agent. The smell was persistent.''

He noted a beach towel carrying the word 'Norway' over a neighbor's balcony rail and at one stage almost collided with a woman he now believes was Julie Bergheim. ''Oops, sorry,'' he said, and walked on.

Within hours, all four occupants of the two rooms had fallen ill and two, Jill St Onge and Julie Bergheim, later died at the local hospital.

Ryan Kells believes important pieces of equipment - particularly an air filter - disappeared in the aftermath of the deaths.

''Obviously someone just didn't want it [the air filter] to be seen. Where did it go? I am sure it was never found.''

After Jill died on Phi Phi, Ryan was bundled off the island for Phuket in a speedboat, with the body in a bag in the bottom of the boat.

The problem of a holiday death was compounded because, although he and Jill were to be married, he was not recognised as next-of-kin by the US embassy staff.

As with the case of the Belanger sisters, the Canadian government, like the US government, puts the privacy of the individuals above the need for the public to know about the causes of unusual deaths.

Unlike the aftermath of several mysterious deaths in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai last year, when detailed updates were provided, the Thai investigators have chosen to remain close-mouthed about the Phi Phi deaths in 2009 and 2012.

''There isn't a day that goes by when I don't think of Jill and what might have killed her,'' Ryan Kells said this week. ''Somebody needs to put their hand up and say, 'Hey, we made a mistake.'

''I am never, ever going to forget about it. I am not going to stop trying to find answers.''

The Norwegians and the Americans had ''no common experiences,'' he says. ''We did not eat at the same places.'' So the mystery remains, and now there have been two more deaths.

A Swedish friend who had once lived on Phi Phi told Ryan that, when bad things happened on the island - as they inevitably did with large numbers of young people out to have fun - the incidents were always covered up. The local police were, to put it mildly, not noted for their detective skills.

After the 2009 deaths, Ryan became friends with Julie Bergheim's mother in Norway via Facebook. The families, united by tragedy and mystery, exchange Christmas cards.

Jill St Onge's ashes were returned to the US and her family later scattered them from a boat on Monterey Bay. Ryan and Jill were great travelers and he has since been to South America.

''I feel I need to do it for Jill,'' he said. ''It's as if I am saying, 'Here's where we would have gone next. This is what we would have been doing.'''

There is no new woman in his life. Ryan says he has gone from being ''a really happy person'' to ''someone who sticks by himself.'' He took a change in career paths and now works as an emergency medical technician on an ambulance.

He and Jill had been together for seven years. ''My best friend died so needlessly,'' he said. ''I guess my aim now is to spare others that pain.''

Deet can be used on kratom plants as an insecticide. When you ingest kratom, you ingest the leaves and stem. So I don't think they are saying that Deet was put in the drinks. They are saying that Deet contaminated kratom was ingested.

Maybe some kratom plants accidentally got harvested that had been sprayed with Deet recently. I that is a good possibility.

the only problem with that is the acute oral toxicity is about 2000mg/kg (or 2grams/kg), so a 60kg woman would need 120 grams to become really sick (acutely ill) and probably a good bit more than that to reliably kill. This is why there are few--or zero--reported deaths by DEET.

so some DEET on some leaves wouldn't be enough to make them really ill, much less kill them.

What if they were soaked in deet the same day that they were harvested and the girls chowed down on the kratom ? Or the kratom was put in a drink mixer and served ?

How can we know how much toxicity would be in DEET comtaminated kratom ?

What if they were soaked in deet the same day that they were harvested and the girls chowed down on the kratom ? Or the kratom was put in a drink mixer and served ?

How can we know how much toxicity would be in DEET comtaminated kratom ?

Go back and read the parts of this thread that you obviously missed. All the info about DEET toxicity is there. It takes ounces of the stuff, more than would be on kratom leaves, assuming this story is even remotely true, that is, Thais purposefully put bug poison in drinks to get a 'buzz'.

No one so far on this forum has heard anything about DEET being added to bucket drinks except all of a sudden the Thais are spinning this idea regarding the Belanger sisters.

Only 8 people died in 40 years in the United States from DEET poisoning. One every five years. And now all of a sudden we are supposed to believe the Belanger sisters drank a bunch of DEET that is supposedly added to bucket drinks when no one has ever heard of this, much less heard of anyone getting sick and dying from something the Thais are spinning as part of Phi Phi fun.

If there was enough DEET in their drinks to kill them then it wasn't accidental.

You said this before, Socal and I showed you before it can't have been recreational drugs.

Recreational drugs don't cause those symptoms.

Do you think if you keep saying it over and over it will make it true?

So these cough syrup (also used in good ol crystal meth), kratom, sang som and DEET (maybe some shrooms for good measure) cocktails made by guys like JJ are not considered recreational drugs ??

If these were Thai girls, this thread would be a page long. These girls are not likely as polished as the western media thinks. Wouldn't want some reality to get in the way of a good western sob story.

They are probably just your average urban sluts. Who seem to have a thing for hairy Portuguese men..

What if they were soaked in deet the same day that they were harvested and the girls chowed down on the kratom ? Or the kratom was put in a drink mixer and served ?

How can we know how much toxicity would be in DEET comtaminated kratom ?

Go back and read the parts of this thread that you obviously missed. All the info about DEET toxicity is there. It takes ounces of the stuff, more than would be on kratom leaves, assuming this story is even remotely true, that is, Thais purposefully put bug poison in drinks to get a 'buzz'.

No one so far on this forum has heard anything about DEET being added to bucket drinks except all of a sudden the Thais are spinning this idea regarding the Belanger sisters.

Only 8 people died in 40 years in the United States from DEET poisoning. One every five years. And now all of a sudden we are supposed to believe the Belanger sisters drank a bunch of DEET that is supposedly added to bucket drinks when no one has ever heard of this, much less heard of anyone getting sick and dying from something the Thais are spinning as part of Phi Phi fun.

If there was enough DEET in their drinks to kill them then it wasn't accidental.

Binge drinking is the key.

How would you know the toxicity of 6 JJ specials consumed in 15 minutes ?

This summer, four young women set off on vacations in Southeast Asia. Here’s what they had in common: They were all from North America; they were all in their 20s; they were all pretty, bright, adventurous. And one more commonality: They are all now dead.

Audrey and Noemi Belanger

Two of these deaths occurred in June in Thailand, two in June in Vietnam. All four women were diagnosed with the symptoms of acute poisoning. And while some explanations have been offered by the authorities, these have been either vague, improbable (see my recent post on the deaths in Thailand) or opaque (see CNN’s Friday story on the deaths in Vietnam). My favorite statement is one from the Thai police that it could be “months before official results are revealed if ever.” (Emphasis mine).

If ever? What kind of a police response is that? Does it mean that that investigators know something they don’t want to tell? Or that they don’t have a clue? It’s no wonder that the rumor mills are spinning stories of murder, of a serial killer stalking female tourists in Southeast Asia, of a police cover-up to protect the valued tourist industry. The serial killer idea, of course, builds on earlier mysteries: the 2009 death of a Seattle woman, still unsolved today. The similar and also unexplained death of a 22-year-old woman from Norway the same year. An odd cluster of deaths in another Thai city during winter of last year, including a 23-year-old woman from New Zealand.

The other theory circulating is that the police are covering up the careless use of insecticides by Asian hotels; an explanation denied, of course, by the hotel industry. It doesn’t explain, of course, why most of these deaths involve females in their 20s. But there’s some support for it from an independent investigation into the 2011 death of New Zealander Sarah Carter.

Carter was staying at a hotel in Chiang Mai, Thailand, when she died (along with five other tourists). The police blamed a coincidental outbreak of food poisoning. But Carter’s family turned over tissue samples to investigative journalists from a New Zealand television station. The resulting laboratory analysis reportedly found traces of an old-time organophosphate pesticide called chlorpyrifos.

Sarah Carter

This insecticide has been around since the mid-1960s. It’s a Dow Chemical Company product sold in the United States under the tradename Dursban. Like all organophosphate pesticides, it’s highly effective due to its action on the the nervous system Although it’s only considered moderately toxic to humans, it is linked to neurological effects and can pose developmental risks to children. Although it’s still widely used in agriculture, it’s no longer registered for use in residential settings in the U.S. But Dow does market it for such uses in developing countries, leading to suspicions that it had been surreptitiously used in Carter’s hotel to treat for bed bugs.

The problem with this theory — as with so many of the theories floated in the case of these Asian tourist deaths — is that it doesn’t hold up well under scrutiny. Autopsies reportedly found myocarditis (put simply, an inflammation of the heart muscle) in some of the dead tourists but the classic symptoms of chlorpyrifos poisoning tend to be those of classic neurotoxicity, starting with dizziness and loss of coordination, ending with a gradual shutdown of heart and lungs. As Thailand’s tourism-focused publication, Phuket Wan, reported the investigation into the death of Sarah Carter and others in 2011 simply ended in mystery.

Cathy Huynh and Kari Bowerman

The possibility of chlorpyrifos or some other insecticide poisoning has also been raised in this summer’s deaths of American Karin Bowerman, 27, of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and Canadian Cathy Huynh, 26, of Hamilton, Ontario. The two friends – both working as English language teachers in South Korea – were backpacking in Vietnam, when they were admitted to a hospital in Nha Trang in late July, suffering from vomiting, dehydration and difficulty breathing. Bowerman died that day; Huynh two days later.

But so far no information seems to be available about how they might have been exposed to that or any poison. “No police report. No hospital report. No nothing,” Bowerman’s sister, Jennifer Jacques told CNN in a fury of frustration. The lack of information has led friends of Bowerman’s from Winona State University in Minnesota, where she graduated, to launch a letter writing campaign to U.S. officials, begging for help.

Jill St. Onge

Another group of friends has launched a Facebook page, Protected Travels, which serves as both an archive of such mysterious deaths and a resource for travelers. Among the unexplained deaths you’ll find on the page is that of Seattle’s Jill St. Onge, who died of an apparent – and still unexplained – poisoning while visiting Thailand’s Phi Phi Islands in 2009.

In the case, I wrote about earlier, the deaths of Canadians Noemi and Audrey Belanger in Thailand’s Phi Phi Islands in June, the police have posited a string of theories, beginning with food poisoning and ending, for the moment, with a toxic bar drink. The Belanger sisters, aged 26 and 20, were vacationing in the islands when they were found dead in their hotel room on June 15, reportedly smeared with vomit and feces and marked by bloody skin lesions and blue-black fingernails.

In early September, investigators announced that the two young women had been killed by the mosquito repellent DEET, which they explained was often mixed into beach cocktails, known as bucket drinks. As I pointed out in my earlier post, this would be a good explanation if DEET were really all that poisonous but, in fact, even a basic check of the toxicology databases will tell you that it isn’t, that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies it with “low level” toxicity for mammals.

Is it entirely benign? Absolutely not. There were some studies following the Gulf War, for instance, that found that DEET, in combination with other pesticides, could induce some dismaying neurological symptoms. Can it kill people? Yes, people have successfully committed suicide by mixing one more or more bottles of pure DEET with pure alcohol. Do those deaths look like the bloody messy ones of Belanger sisters? No. DEET’s effects are, again, primarily neurotoxic.

There was, in fact, an immediate skeptical outcry at Teakdoor, a listserv for ex-patriots living in Thailand. As one Teakdoor member wrote me off-list: “I have lived in Thailand for years and I have been immersed in all-things Thailand and I have never heard for mixing DEET into a bucket drink. Google ‘bucket drink’ and see if you can find anything regarding DEET or insecticide-in-bucket-drinks that is not related to the Belanger sisters story.”

I did just that and I could not find a single story UNTIL I found this one, which made it clear that DEET is not regularly mixed into Phi Phi Island cocktails. The standard recipe instead is kratom leaf extract (a slightly hallucinogenic compound derived from a regional tree), cough syrup (containing codeine, I presume), Coca-Cola and ice, and is known as a 4 x 100. So even if we disregard the question of improbable symptoms, we’re left with these questions: If DEET is not a standard ingredient in a bucket cocktail, if it’s only lethal in a deliberately high dose, if the Belanger sisters were the only tourists poisoned that night, then who killed them? If this is murder, for instance, there are other compounds that more neatly fit the toxicology, ranging from the solvent toluene to the date-rape drug, GHB.

I’m not owed answers regarding the deaths of these young women. But their families deserve an honest response. And women traveling in Southeast Asia are owed more concern for their safety that this. And if the authorities in Southeast Asia want to sound something other than indifferent, I can promise you, that ”if ever” is never going to be good enough.

Phi Phi remains popular with young women despite mysterious deaths
Photo by phuketwan.com/file

Phi Phi Mystery Grows, Authorities Hold Back Autopsy Findings

By Rattanawan Vatcharasorat and Alan Morison
Friday, September 21, 2012

PHUKET: A tourism industry official who once thought Thai police were ''covering up'' the cause of the deaths of Canadian sisters Noemi and Audrey Belanger has changed his mind.

Krabi Tourism Association president, Ittirit Kinglek, said he thought the ''cover-up'' theory was correct when he was first interviewed on the topic some time ago.

However, he now understands that police investigating the mysterious deaths of the sisters on the holiday island of Phi Phi - part of the province of Krabi - are obliged to not say anything at this stage.

''Before, it looked like a cover up,'' he told Phuketwan today. ''However, I now understand that the police have been asked by the Canadian Embassy to not explain to the media what happened.''

Investigating police now say there may be more details released about the mysterious deaths of Noemi, 26, and Audrey, 20, at the end of September.

One of the investigators previously revealed to Phuketwan that autopsies performed on the two women in Bangkok showed insecticide present in the bodies.

National television in Canada soon after claimed that a reporter had seen the autoposy report in Bangkok, and that the chemical DEET was specifically mentioned.

The reporter deduced that DEET may have been an ingredient in a ''cocktail'' that the sisters drank on Phi Phi, where it's a tourist custom for all kinds of ingredients to be mixed together by individuals and drunk from plastic buckets.

Khun Ittirit said today that he now understood the constraints on police, and realised that Canadian officials, not the police, were holding back publication of what's known about the case.

''In my opinion,'' he said, ''if something happens in Krabi, police need to be clear and explain in Thailand what happened, not wait for Canadian authorities to let us say something.''

It is believed second autopsies were performed on the sisters in Canada, before their funerals. Thorough laboratory tests in such cases, though, can take many weeks.

The bodies of the sisters were found in their room at a Phi Phi resort on June 15, more than three months ago.

Although Khun Ittirit now accepts that there has been no cover-up by Thai police, he would like to see more strict checks on the many bars that have sprung up on Phi Phi and in two other Krabi destinations popular with international 20-somethings, Koh Lanta and Ao Nang.

''Big money talks,'' he said. ''There was a time when there was just one street in Krabi where there were bars. ''Now there are bars all over, and there seem to be few controls.''

Calls to the Public Health department and Krabi police today failed to establish the precise nature of Thai laws governing whether alcohol and other ingedients could be mixed and served in buckets of various sizes, as happens on Phi Phi.

The deaths of the two sisters have been linked in news reports to the still-unexplained deaths in similar circumstances on Phi Phi in 2009 of American Jill St Onge, 27, and Julie Bergheim, 22.

Other young tourists, including New Zealander Sarah Carter, 23, died in mysterious circumstances last year in the Thai city of Chiang Mai.

More recently in Vietnam, the names of American Kari Bowerman, 27, and Canadian Cathy Huynh, 26, were added to the growing list of puzzling deaths.

Ferry operators say there has been no drop in passengers to Phi Phi from Phuket, the nearest tourist hub, despite the mysterious deaths.

taking the chiang mai cases into account, then its even more likely the water/pool of the specific location (hotel/guesthouse)... rather than the room... (as one women died under same circumstances, which had only used the pool/bathrooms of that deadly guesthouse)

taking the chiang mai cases into account, then its even more likely the water/pool of the specific location (hotel/guesthouse)... rather than the room... (as one women died under same circumstances, which had only used the pool/bathrooms of that deadly guesthouse)

very unlikely that food/drinks are the cause...

thats quite clear from all cases...

If you have read the entire thread, instead of jumping in on the last page and making a whacky comment, you would know that exposure via skin or even inhalation is highly unlikely. It is quite clear that the 'water/pool' cannot be the cause.

Vietnamese police have announced that the results of an autopsy on Karin Bowerman ( R), who died mysteriously with her Vietnamese-Canadian travel companion in Nha Trang this summer, showed no traces of poison.

Vietnamese police say that an American tourist who died mysteriously in Nha Trang passed away due to a cerebral edema, not because of poisoning.

Traveling companions Karin Joy Bowerman, 27, and Vietnamese Canadian Cathy Huynh, 26, both died in July at a hospital in the central province of Khanh Hoa’s premier beach town.

An autopsy was carried out on Bowerman while Huynh’s family requested that her body be returned to Canada without examination in Vietnam.

The Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper quoted an unnamed Nha Trang police leader as saying that Bowerman died from “breathing failure and circulatory collapse due to brain edema (swelling caused by fluid).

“No toxic traces have been found in her blood and gastric fluids,” the police official said Tuesday.

As no poison was detected in the samples taken, the police would not launch any criminal investigation in the case, he said.

Bowerman and Huynh were working as English teachers in South Korea at the time of their deaths. Their trip to Vietnam was taken during a break from school. Their deaths took place within two days of their arrival in Vietnam.

They were admitted to Khanh Hoa Army and People's Hospital at around 7 p.m. on July 30 with severe vomiting.

Doctors said Bowerman was in more serious condition than Huynh and had vomited around 15 times and her heartbeat was much faster than normal.
Bowerman was transferred to the Khanh Hoa General Hospital with respiratory failure, a fast heartbeat and no blood pressure and pulse. She died at 10:40 p.m. the same day.

Meanwhile, Huynh was discharged from the Khanh Hoa Army and People’s Hospital at 9:30 p.m. and returned to a hotel where she and Bowerman had stayed.

According to the hotel’s owner, Huynh said she was okay and it looked like she was in normal condition until the morning of August 1, when she said she felt tired.

At noon, she took a taxi to the Khanh Hoa General Hospital.

Doctors said Huynh was conscious when she was admitted to the hospital, but it looked like she was dizzy. Her condition got worse and she died early on August 2.

At her family’s request, Bowerman’s body was cremated in Ho Chi Minh City and her ashes have been sent back to the US.

Huynh’s family refused to allow an autopsy or tests on her while in Vietnam, saying there was no need because the results would be the same as Bowerman’s.

On September 14, the Khanh Hoa Justice Department issued a death certificate with the cause of Huynh’s death as “unrecoverable shock due to unknown reason.”

After the autopsy result of Bowerman was announced, Christopher Hodges, the US embassy spokesperson in Vietnam, said the US Consulate in HCMC was in contact with the family and was providing consular assistance.

Bowerman’s autopsy result was announced by Vietnamese police a day after a report by the Post Bulletin of Rochester said US Senator Al Franken was asking the State Department to look into the deaths of Bowerman and Huynh.

In his letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Franken wrote: "The anguish is heightened by reports that the circumstances surrounding their deaths are similar to others who were traveling in the region and also died suddenly."

The paper said Bowerman’s friends have raised the possibility that the two women were poisoned through exposure to a pesticide or some other toxic substance.

According to an AP report Tuesday, Bowerman’s family and friends have launched a letter-writing campaign to get the US government to seek answers to her death.

Karin Bowerman’s sister, Ashley Bowerman, said their campaign has spread to at least 12 states, the newswire reported.

International media reports have linked the deaths to an incident in Thailand in June in which two Canadian sisters were found dead in their hotel room, covered in vomit, CNN and CDC News reported.

In February 2011, New Zealand resident Sarah Carter, 23, died in Chiang Mai, Thailand, after arriving at a local hospital with low blood pressure, difficulty breathing and dehydration from vomiting, according to the New Zealand television network TV3.

At the Downtown Inn where Carter had stayed, the Bangkok Post said three other visitors – a Thai tour guide and an elderly British couple – had died between January and May 2011.

“In 2011, TV3 traveled to Chiang Mai, Thailand, to search for evidence in the Sarah Carter case. Show producers spoke with Dr. Ron McDowall, a United Nations toxic chemical consultant, who had reviewed Carter's pathology reports and believed she died of pesticide ingestion,” said a CNN report.

The US Environmental Protection Agency says chlorpyrifos can cause nausea, dizziness, confusion and, in high levels, respiratory paralysis and death.

McDowall told CNN the chemical was banned for use in homes and hotels in most countries, but is still legal in Thailand and Vietnam.

The CNN report said the chemical was included in the pesticide sprayed at the Downtown Inn.

"The level of (chlorpyrifos) in this product is quite low and should not normally cause a problem. However, in my work we have found many sprayer companies 'top up' the level of (chlorpyrifos) when they are battling bedbugs in Asia," said McDowall.

The CNN report noted that evidence for the insecticide theory is mounting.

“Thai police recently announced they found traces of the insect repellent DEET in the Belanger sisters' bodies, according CBC. Investigators believe the DEET was added as an ingredient to a popular cocktail served on the island,” it said.

The Downtown Inn was destroyed this year after the Thailand Disease Control Department concluded that three of the deaths were "probably connected to the use of pesticides," according to the Bangkok Post.

Chemical poisoning is very hard to verify, McDowall told CNN.

Investigators with the World Health Organization suspect poisoning is to blame for the spate of deaths, but determining the origin has proven difficult, according to CNN.

Chlorpyrifos' half-life in humans – or the amount of time it takes for half of the original amount disappears – is about one day.

thanhniennews.com

__________________"Keeping quiet while monks and other peaceful protesters are murdered and jailed is not evidence of constructive engagement." - Arvind Ganesan, Human Rights Watch.

Is it possible that the one thing all of the ill had in common was the ingesting of Kratom? It doesn't show up on toxicology and it won't show up on drug tests apparently.

I am wondering if it is possible that the Mitragyna speciosa plant (Kratom) and it's pharmacological alkaloids such as mitragynine, mitraphylline, and 7-hydroxymitragynine may have caused some sort of acute allergic reaction leading to cerebral edema?

Users of Kratom report that it is not hallucinogenic but, rather analgesic, similar to that of opiates. And side effects can include dehydration, nausea, vomiting, and respiratory depression. Could this lead to death?

Phi Phi Mystery Deaths: Canadian Government Remains Hushed About Sisters

By Alan Morison
Friday, September 28, 2012

PHUKET: The Canadian Government has responded to a series of questions asked by Phuketwan about the still-mysterious deaths of two Canadian sisters on the holiday island of Phi Phi more than three months ago.

The responses come as investigating police in Thailand continue to say they have been constrained by Canadian embassy officials in Thailand from releasing more details about the cause of the strange deaths of Noemi Belanger, 26, and her sister Audrey, 20.

The young women were found dead in their resort room on Phi Phi on June 15, more than three months ago. One investigating officer told Phuketwan on August 30 that an autopsy in Bangkok revealed the presence of insecticide in the sisters' bodies.

A Canadian journalist reported soon after that the Bangkok autopsy report noted DEET - the most common active ingredient in insecticides - in the bodies.

With no official information revealed about the Bangkok autopsy or a second autopsy that took place when the sisters' bodies were returned to Canada, Phuketwan put a series of questions to Canadian government authorities more than a week ago.

Responses arrived via email today:

Q1 Will the results of the autopsy on the Belanger sisters conducted in Canada ever be released? If so, when?

Q2 If reports are correct that the father of the two young women claims a ''cover-up'' has taken place in Thailand concerning the cause of their deaths, will Canadian authorities explain at some point the known facts about these deaths?

Q3 Is there a concern that the Canadian government, by citing the privacy of the family as a reason for not releasing information about this case, could wrongly be perceived to be part of a so-called cover-up?

A1-3Due to federal privacy laws, further details on this case cannot be released.

Q4 Under what circumstances does the Canadian government place public interest above the right to privacy in puzzling deaths of this kind, especially overseas?

Q5 If enough Canadians seek an answer to these questions, is it likely that the Canadian government will at some point place public interest and their citizens' right to know above individual right to privacy?

AForeign Affairs and International Trade Canada abides by the rules and regulations governed by the Privacy Act. You can find additional information on the Privacy Act here: Privacy Act

A6Please refer to Statistics Canada for information on the number of Canadian travellers to Thailand last year. You will find their contact details at the following site: STC's Media Room - Media hotline

Q7 If the deaths of these two young women continue to go unexplained privately or publicly, at what point will a warning be issued to protect Canadians (and other nations' citizens) from suffering a similar fate?

A7The Government of Canada closely monitors safety and security conditions in foreign countries and updates Travel Reports accordingly. On August 31st, the Travel Report for Thailand was updated to note that: ''some media reports indicate that there have been recent cases of poisoning allegedly linked to the consumption of a Thai beverage containing DEET.''

The Government of Canada recommends that Canadians never accept food or drinks from strangers and never leave food or drinks unattended, particularly in bars. Cases of drugging followed by robbery and sexual assault have occurred. Drugs may be administered through drinks, food, aerosols, cigarettes, gum, or in powder form. Canadians who suspect they have been drugged should seek immediate medical attention.

The families of American Jill St Onge, 27, and Norwegian Julie Bergheim, 22, who died mysteriously in similar fashion on Phi Phi in 2009, are among those who would like to know more about the cause of death of the Belanger sisters.

In Krabi, the province of Thailand that oversees the popular island of Phi Phi, investigating police say there may be more details released about the mystery ''at the end of September.''

One Krabi tourism spokesperson said recently that Thai police should decide whether information about tourist deaths in Thailand should be released, not the Canadian embassy.

Is it possible that the one thing all of the ill had in common was the ingesting of Kratom?

No. Kratom isn't that toxic and would not cause the symptoms they had.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hatesauce

I am wondering if it .....may have caused some sort of acute allergic reaction leading to cerebral edema?

They didn't die of cerebral edema.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hatesauce

Users of Kratom ..... side effects can include dehydration, nausea, vomiting, and respiratory depression. Could this lead to death?

actually, those aren't the correct symptoms. According to Frank LoVecchio, medical director of the Banner Good Samaritan Poison and Drug Information Center in Phoenix, Ariz.

Although there have been no fatalities from kratom, "The known risks and dangers of Kratom overdoses include hallucinations, delusions, listlessness, tremors, aggression, constipation and nausea," the site said.

it might lead to death at extremely high concentrations if you chemically extracted the active ingredient and gave about 35 grams of the extract to someone but the death would not have the symptoms these victims had.

"based on the acute toxicity study the LD50 for alkaloid extract and mitragynine was estimated 591.6 mg/kg and 477mg/kg"